The Clay Township board of supervisors continues to cultivate their relationship with the Northern Lancaster County Regional Police Department.

One of the recent developments in the continuing progress of the NLCRPD is an attempt to make some ordinances more uniform between the three participating municipalities — Clay, Warwick and Penn townships. This would make enforcement a more simple process for the officers. The board expressed their readiness to start the process of adjusting their current parking ordinance to fit with those of Penn and Warwick. The changes would involve standardizing the penalty and changing the ordinance to specifically reference the NLCRPD for enforcement. If all townships agree to the changes, authorization for the drafting of the adjusted ordinance will be at a later date. Making the parking ordinances uniform is not expected to be a complicated process.

For the sake of the NLCRPD, the townships are planning on looking at other ordinances in the future and deciding whether to revise them to better reflect those of their fellow participants in the NLCRPD.

"We’re in the process of seeing what everybody has and is there something that’s better for us, and if not, we keep what we have," explained township manager Bruce Leisey.

This plan was met with some concern from a resident. To one degree or another, all the supervisors made it clear that changes will not be made haphazardly.

"We regionalized the police department to save money, and all the other benefits are great, but we didn’t envision having to regionalize in a lot of other areas…The demographics of the areas are different," noted township secretary Keith Martin.

"You start with one thing, and then, well now we need this the same, now we need this the same, and it just keeps going. Where do you stop, and where’s the difference? I mean if you want to move to Penn Township, move to Penn Township," said a concerned resident.

"We’ll evaluate the merits of each… it’s not the assumption that we’re going to move forward. The question is simply, ‘Does this make sense for Clay or not, and if not, then it doesn’t change," said vice-chairman Justin Harnish.

"I think all the municipalities involved, they’re open-minded enough to understand Clay is different from Warwick, it is different than Penn," clarified chairman Timothy Lausch.

Harnish was interested to find out how the Northern York County Regional Police Department dealt with dissimilar ordinances when they regionalized. The board is expected to officially approve the revising of the parking ordinance at a future meeting.

Improvements at Snyder Park are progressing with a bid being awarded for the extension of the water and sewer line. This will allow for bathrooms and be available for use in a possible future pavilion. The board also approved advertisement for bids to pave a walking trail within Snyder Park. The board clarified that the money for these improvements is not taxpayer money; comes from developers. It is a part of the developer’s agreement that they contribute money for park improvements.

"Those monies, we can’t really take them and use them for anything but park work," clarified Lausch.

It is hoped that these park improvements will make the park a more convenient recreational area. More CLAY TWP., page A15